Category Archives: Little Things

Over the last week I have nearly cried three times missing France. Three times.

If you think about it, that’s kinda pathetic. Miss something you experienced for 9 days? Miss the “vacation” experience—which is so different from every-day-life (even in a foreign country!). Cry over French bread? Sigh wistfully over 2 hour lunches where the waiters don’t bother you and the dry, brilliant sun casts long shadows under cypress and olive trees? Ah, yes, sigh.

We are learning to take our once-in-a-blue-moon memories and experiences and weave them back into our everyday lives. For one, we are learning to eat our meals slowly. Growing up in big families our meal-times were always something of a race. (“Let’s see who can make the meal which took an hour to cook go from plate to stomach in under 7 minutes?!?”) We are learning to put our forks down in-between bites, to take our plates outside, and to sometimes just gaze at each other while our food takes in the air.

I know the French would approve. Dans ces petites choses est l’essence de la vie.

French books now intermingle with English ones on our bookshelves–particularly a gilded copy of Flaubert’s Salammbo purchased after wondering over Paris’ Latin Quarter, peering into every librairie we passed until we discovered a Dickin-ish mess of a store with a haphazard Professor-type who knew the history of each of the wondrous novels which towered from store floor to ceiling (intermingled with papers and a good deal of dust). We wanted something très vieux, très beau. He had no English to speak of, but we understood one another, and we did not leave till the old book, the beautiful book, was triumphantly in hand.

Dans ces petites choses est l’essence de la vie.

Speaking of old things, we visited the Catacombs in Paris. Wifey (c’est moi) had saved up her “standing in line” points by skipping the touristy attractions such as the Eiffel and Arc de Triomphe—and she spent them all lavishly on seeing the Catacombs. The line wasn’t long–scarcely half a block–but it moved at a deathly crawl. Two and a half hours we waited, while making the acquaintance of a Christian Lebanese man named Rudolph. He was considering moving to the States and wanted to know about Social Security and which states were best for business. We spent our time doing everything from talking about marriage and Islam to sharing a Nutella crepe off of a street cart and playing a hand-game in which we relentlessly slapped each other.

Dans ces petites choses est l’essence de la vie.

Inside the Catacombs I had a moment which I am indescribably proud of. I have long had a rather persistent inclination to over-accommodate everyone around me. (It’s the wide-eyed, people-please-er part of me which makes strangers tell me their secrets.) After our two hour wait we whirled down what felt like eight stories down a narrow, spiral staircase into the earth. We walked along a narrow passage for a long time—till we reached the entrance to the underground ossuarie where 6 million people are buried. There are signs reminding you to be respectful, this is a place of the dead, ne touche pas, do not touch the bones. For there are bones! Walls and walls of stacked bones and skulls for passageway after passageway: we saw just an hour of a 200 mile matrix.

We had only just entered, our breaths caught in our chests in dreadful awe, when our respectful reverie was broken by raucous laughter some 10 yards behind us. A group of American teenagers had entered the catacombs.

As our skin crawled in embarrassment, we felt anguish for the visiting nationals—wondering if any (usually) quiet-spoken French person would find it worthwhile to take another annoying group of American Tourists in hand. Unlikely.

Then something happened that I simply couldn’t bear. They began to touch the bones. And then, horror of horrors, while laughing in a hysterical, jeering sort of way, one of the boys grabbed a large femur off of a burial mound and started waving it in the air, “LOOK! This used to be a DEAD person!”

I felt a hot surge of anger flood over me. Every ounce of older-sister indignation (or college RA authority) I’ve ever possessed came rushing to my aid. All at once I heard my own voice ringing out in decisive, cutting clarity, “GUUUYYS—!!! YOU NEED TO PUT THEM DOWN!”

I think if their own long-dead American grandparents had suddenly coming to life out of the bones to scold them they could not have been more shocked or chastened by hearing “ne touche pas” declared in their native tongue in the French House of the Dead.

We did our best never to self-identify as tourists of any kind. We always tried to speak as much French as possible (Bonjour, je voudrais deux billets, si vouz plaît). I did my best to dress as French as possible (no patterns or bright colors—a dead giveaway even in fashionable american women). We met nothing of the so-called French rudeness, not in Provence where we stayed nor even in Paris. But we saw enough rude tourists to warrant any reactionary behavior! I figure, in the end, that the French are like any people group—if somebody came up to you New York City (let alone rural Michigan) and asked you without so much as a how-do-you-do in a huffy, annoyed sort of voice where the National Park was… in Spanish, or German, or French, you would be annoyed too. We did our best to speak French—we smiled and bade pardon—and were met with as much eagerness to known and be known and communicate back as we offered. It was delightful.

Instead of rudeness we met the eager warm of our host in Aix-En Provence, where we had olive oil pressed from her garden, were urged with smiles and careful instructions into zip-lining on the property, and received a vineyard recommendation communicated in French-for-children (for we were like children with our small sentences and eager gestures).

Instead of haughtiness, we met one of the kindest, most welcoming people I have ever met. Our Parisian host waited for us on the street to arrive, gave us wine and got up early every morning to bring us a French breakfast (croissants, baguettes, cafe). He shared his stories, and he shared his medicines in the middle of the night when we were at various times unwell! He spent hours giving recommendations and hand-writing directions and tracing routes on our map. He laughed with us at the funny pictures and stories we brought back every evening. He teased us, (the 1815 building had a small glass elevator… “Very small—but then—you are small people!”). We exchanged ideas. He was the consummate gentleman–a man who welcomed us into his home and heart as if we were not just staying a few days but had known each other all our lives.

Dans ces petites choses est l’essence de la vie.

I found myself loving little things I noticed. The way everybody says hello to everyone. The way I saw such tenderness to children—I never heard a raised voice or an impatient tug (until once by an American mother in Paris). Every parent’s hand was holding their child’s, or stroking their arm or their head. Even the two-year-old who wailed almost the entire plain-ride there was lovingly rocked all six hours.

I had also expected, in some strange way, to find a more aggressively secular society. And I suppose France is as modern and agnostic as any modern nation these days. But I think I had expected that, whereas in America we were founded by Puritans and God-fearers who revolted “justly” and “lawfully,” (and now our cities are virtual alters to selfishness and sensuality)—France! (surely) who had built alters to the Goddess Liberty—would be even more devoted to her unrighteous causes.

It would be unfair to make any direct comparison based on 9 bare-eyed days. But I will say I was surprised. I was amazed and comforted at the unabashed presence of cathedrals, saints, crosses, and even the little Christian bookstore we wandered into and purchased Le Petit Prince (l’essential est invisible pour les yeux). The places we visited in Provence were as wholesome as idyllic villages in 1800s Austen novels. Even the quasi-nudity in the rocky coves of Cassis’ calanques took on an au-naturel wholesomeness I had not expected to find so unshocking. (Perhaps a culture that has never, in Gnosticism, accused the body God made Good of being evil, finds the body more natural than sexual when unclothed.)

We were also surprised to find Christ’s Body in France. In the little city of Aix-En Provence, known for its fountains, we found a Reformed Evangelical Church. On Sunday we worshiped with God’s people—and there I cried again. Cried to connect so deeply with worshiping Dutch and German and French believers that there gathered. Touched that the language of Divine Love translated so easily through word, look, and song. Moved that I could sing “A toi la gloire” and know, “Thine be the glory, O Lord forever and ever, Amen.”

L’essence de la vie.

I understood very little of the sermon, but I gathered it was on Acts 20, Paul’s heartfelt farewell to the church of Ephesus—whom he was leaving, never to see them again. I kept hearing the Pastor talk about the “situation difficile” the difficulty of Paul’s situation, the difficulty of ours.

The church is the same the world over. Somehow worshiping in France brought all the beauty and wonder of our trip into perspective. Perhaps, yes perhaps, one could live somewhere else in the world where it is better. Simpler? Safer? Older? Realer? Tastier? More lovely? And sometimes those chances come to us and I think it is okay to take them. But it will never be our aim in life to live easily, or our best lives now. God has put us where we are, just as he put Paul in Jerusalem and Rome, not to gorge ourselves on what this earth has to offer but to take these tastes of heaven (whether in God-made beauty, the family of believers, or at The Table) as sustenance during our journeys Home. Even the Christians in France are strangers in a foreign land. We “taste and see that the Lord is Good—happy are those who take refuge in Him.”

And so we return to our church, our jobs, and our little New England town. And we say, “this is ours”—ours to show Grace to, ours to show Christ to, ours to Love. For in these small things is the essential of life.

Today Yours Truly had a melt-down. Not a radioactive melt-down. Just a sweet, sticky pile of melted ice-cream kind of melt-down (‘cept a whole lot saltier).

You see I’ve been teething of late. Like a baby. I can relate with their tears now: that burning, aching, soreness in the center of your noggin. So close to your brain. If I were a baby I’d cry about it. A baby can’t compare it to falling off a bike, or an amputation, or nuclear war. It’s the worst pain they’ve ever been in and it’s pretty bad.

Wisdom (incarnated in my teeth) decided to visit the left side of my mouth first. A dear friend made me a homeopathic serum of coconut and clove oil and it did wonders for my swelling gums. Then, wonder of wonders, the pain went away.

Mind-you, I was supposed to have my wisdom teeth out over the summer. The dentists said so. “Yeah, you should get those out,” they said in a very nonchalant, off-handed-suggestion sort of way. Like, “Maybe you should try onion-and-tomato ice-cream.” Like it’d be good for me but understandably unpleasant. So needless to say it didn’t happen.

Well when two days ago I woke up with seething, pressurized pain on the OTHER side of my mouth, I wished I had been wiser. I sat through classes with my hand massaging my jaw all day. I also suffer from TMJ, so my mouth was freaking out, too. I couldn’t sing in choir. Then last night the pain was so bad I couldn’t concentrate–I fell asleep (ever-so-slowly) with a hot-pack against my face.

Remember those children’s illustrations where the character has their head tied up in white cloth under their chin with a bow on top? They wear a face of great discomfort and their cheek’s the size of a tennis-ball? That’s how I felt.

Thanksgiving break hasn’t time for surgery. Waiting till Christmas would mean over a month of pain and meds, AND risking infection, orthodontic work getting messed up, or the teeth attaching to the bone. Immediate action was called for.

So my mother and I slipped into high-gear, and a flurry of e-mails (something near 20) were exchanged in a matter of an hour or two trying to figure out where to go in the middle of nowhere in Michigan for oral surgery (and as soon as possible!). Needless to say, working through brain-waves intermingled with radiating dental pain was bound to go awry. I had called one place, thinking it was the dentist who could give a consultation that would enable me to have prescribed medication, and miraculously got an appointment for a half-hour later. I’d gone over to the college Nurse’s Office (leaving lunch early to get there before they closed), and there I got a host of directions including how to get to said dentist office. (Did I mention I don’t have a phone or car?) A college-security gentleman drove me over to the place. “Take care of your pain!” he called as he dropped me off.

But no sooner had I arrived and started filling out paper-work then we discovered that I was at the wrong place! The appointment I’d made was with the oral surgeon: over a half-hour away and already over. So as my mom, (on the dentist’s phone), and the receptionist sweetly tried to sort out all the details, the many mistakes, and reschedule appointments, I clung to composure. I thought about my missed appointment, being stranded at the dentist, the classes I was missing, the crazy amount of effort put into getting there all for naught, and the three papers I still needed to write (which would no-doubt be the far worse for being written directly after oral-surgery). And I thought about all this as the pain made my head feel a mushy, foggy, bog.

So yes, I had a little mini-melt-down. I stood in the anti-room between the entry doorways and let the tears slowly fall. Like melting ice-cream and so many sweet dreams.

The receptionist had kindly called multiple numbers for me, and a security man was on his way to pick me back up. The same man. I tried to dry my tears before I got in the car.

He was an older gentleman, closer to eighty. His name was Jim. As we drove through the little town we passed by a nondescript collection of running water and some small houses by its bank.

“That’s where me and my wife lived.” he commented, almost to himself, like he couldn’t help saying so in passing by.

“My whole life.” he replied. “Well,” he said, “I used to live in Jackson.” Jackson was the town next-door. As someone who’s moved seven times, once across the continent, this didn’t seem to really count (but I didn’t tell him so). “But I didn’t like it,” he continued. “Here I know all the fishing and hunting spots.”

“Was your wife from here, too?”

Yes, she was, he said. Silently I wondered if she had passed away but at last asked, “Did you go to school together?”

The answer was yes, but he said it like there’d been a barrier, “Weeeellll, I was two years ahead of her.”

I smiled and replied, grinning, “My boyfriend’s two years older than me, and I think it works.”

He laughed quietly. “Yesss,” he mused, “it all worked out pretty good.”

The way he said it, it wasn’t about going to school with his wife, it was his whole long, beautiful life he was thinking about.

And that made me think. Perspective, people. Here was a man who had lived his whole life in the same twenty-five square miles. He’d married a girl he’d gone to school with, lived along the banks of a back-water town-stream, and in his old age worked Security for a college. He’d spent the last few hour of the day jumping college student’s cars and taking me to and fro from the dentist.

And his life was beautiful. And he was a beautiful, kind old man.

My teeth suddenly felt more like a baby-problem. And as the rest of the day passed, and I was comforted by calls from my mother, my boyfriend, and sweet girl-friends who offered rides and post-surgery nursing, I couldn’t help but thinking how blessed I was—and that my own life was pretty beautiful, too.

It was around this time a year or two ago that it happened. Mum, my (then 7 or 8-year-old) little sister, and I had been out shopping and we were wearied and tired and quite hungry. We stopped by Chile’s for a much-needed dinner.

The hostess was a young gall–my age or even younger I surmised. Already in college, you can imagine my shock and, quite frankly, horror, when she glanced skeptically at us and said, “One or two children’s menus?”

“One, thank you.” I cut in pointedly. What did she think I was–twelve? But as if this wasn’t bad enough, the poor clueless thing added insult to injury.

“I’m sorry, you just look really. young.”

I don’t think I managed a reply. She lead us to our table and I sat in stunned, stewing, brewing silence trying to stave off tears. I don’t know that I had–or have since–been so angry at a complete stranger. I thought up all the things I should have said. “Um, no, actually, but I’ll take a martini.” “You know I’m in college, and probably older than you?!?” The tactlessness. The injury. The lack of logic. Me–taller than my mother, towering over my eight-year-old sister. WHAT WAS SHE THINKING?! She wasn’t thinking. But then… I knew that I do look really young.

I admit I’m sensitive about how I look. Obviously. But this is hardly abnormal, and at 5’2” I am petite to-boot–with tiny wrists, feet, hands: everything. On top of this I got the “youthful gene” from both sides of the family–the gene that makes people think my grandmother is my mother, and my mother a newly-wed. I’m sure I’ll appreciate this when I’m forty but for now it’s just the cause of trauma.

I barely ate my dinner. I was so upset. This “appearance-problem” of mine has since lead to purposeful attempts at stylish dressing–in the desperate attempt to look my age. But that particular chilling experience was rather scarring–and to this very day I have not forgotten it.

Well. Today we were out shopping again. Mom, my little sister, and I. In the same plaza.

“We could go to Chile’s…” my mother suggested. I tried not to think about “the last time” but I did anyway. Then I caught a look on Mom’s face–the same one that was on my own. “Are you thinking what I’m thinking?” she asked. We were. We both couldn’t help it. “Put your lipstick on!!!”

I admit I walked through those doors with trepidation–hoping my scarf and darling coat and powdered-face would convince the hostess I didn’t need a children’s menu. I could feel my muscles tensing–and then relaxing in triumph as she grabbed two regular menus. We sat down at our booth and Mum and I exchanged congratulatory comments of success.

But that wasn’t the best of it. When our waiter came over to get the drink order–I was last to go and didn’t have a ready answer.

“Well,” he said, “would you like a martini? Or a house wine? We have this great…” I wasn’t listening.

DUDE!!! he offered me a martini!! I didn’t want one–I eventually decided on water. But the poetic justice was thrillingly perfect.

This week I fell in love with The Weepies’ “Simple Life.” I love the imagery they use in this song, getting up to birds and coffee… (I, too, have sung to birds)… and that inextinguishable need for people, the love and connection between human beings.

Can I get up in the morningPut the kettle onMake us some coffee, say “hey” to the sun…Is it enough to write a song and sing it to the birds?They’d hear just the tuneNot understand my love for wordsBut you would hear me and know…

I want only this, I want to liveI want to live a simple life.

Often I dream of grandeur–fame, adventure, and excitement… when what is precious is the unchanging, and beauty so often small–and our calling as Christians, to faithful living.

I’ll kiss you awake, and we’ll have timeTo know our neighbors all by nameAnd every star at night.We’ll weave our days together like wavesAnd particles of light.

My first cover is a collage of cherry blossoms, sweaters, and letters. Cherry blossoms have long enchanted me with their exotic origins and delicate, pure blooms. Sweaters are as often a nuisance as not, but on a chilly day and pajama bottoms they make comforting companions to tea and books- or letter writing. My last choice, letters: an overflow of thought and feeling into word, one person to another.